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Tag Archives: daily life

Well now,

The other day, right before the year changed, another author posted a comment on one of my posts. It did ‘work’ and draw me to the website. Some younger man seeming to have covered some terrain that hasn’t been the same for me. He wrote about working on his online presence and eventually becoming a financially successful blogger.

Now and Then

To be truthful, lately, I have started blogging again after a bit of a lapse. However, at the moment, when I review the stats, it seems that my best year was in 2012 during which time I was living in a village in Northern Germany in an apartment with my son. The little philosophy booklet Five Big Questions in Life and how to answer them got published but the writing contracts I was getting via Internet facilitated connections with other real people flagged and so in terms of contract writing I had my worst year in over 9 years.

Yet that same year it seems more people read my blog posts. The thing is, despite supposedly having an analytical mind, I have no idea what I did that people preferred unless people have an evil joy in my misery.

Strange, mystical observation

While reviewing my WordPress blog statistics I discovered a bizarre coincidence. The peak number of ‘reads’ that were marked in one day at my blog is the number 499. Now, if and only if you have ever spent time in or around Syracuse, NY might you even notice that by some bizarre coincidence, there is one building downtown 499 (Such n such St. or Ave.) where the number is large, clear and up high, reaching above most of the downtown skyline.

The other day when I saw that 499 sticking up boldly in the midst of downtown Syracuse, I had such an eerie feeling that I reviewed my blog statistics only to find out that it was really true: 499 also = the highest volume of views at my blog so far…but the event occurred in 2012. During 2012 I never once set foot in downtown Syracuse, NY. Perhaps my mother or sister did, but I didn’t.

Conclusion

Bizarre.

Perhaps you all just need to know that when I have authored something intending to sell it to people I did try to make something that would work well for both of us. You would be inspired, or caused to think, or entertained. You would not waste your money but might spend on what I have done for the same reason that you like to be paid when you work. I tried to harness creative energy and use it so that it could serve you rather than only serving me, but serving you-us rather than you-but-not-me or me-only.

Thanks again to everyone who bothered to click on the ‘symbolic thumb’ but please, it would be great if you would start posting comments and delving into discussions.

By the way: Every day is the first day of the rest of each of our lives. There are cases where today is the last day, and for others it is the first. I also like to think of today, as the ‘day after’ everything else that has happened so far.

Personally I find that some days contentment seems to be in certain smells or on the breeze: easy to come by. I have had other days during which I was really much to frazzled for anything even vaguely resembling serenity to enter the picture – unless you mean ‘serene’ like being happy and excited during a storm, or having fun but having a bit of wild time. If that feeling that be interpreted as a form of serenity then I have also experienced it that way.

Life can be so rich with meaning one day and even so, on the worst of days it seems more like the dark underside of something: bleak, abused, meaningless, and bound to get worse as time goes on. Most days of my life so far have been between these extremes. Perhaps that has also been true for you. Please comment on that and let me and one another know.

The last several times I really checked into what I believe to be my “life’s purpose” the actual result was that: I have made some progress in ever area but have not made it as far with a lot that I have set out to do as I had hoped that I would have by this stage of my life.

Remember: age 36 to 40 people crest over from having spent most of their lives as children, even though they may be adults, over into people who have been alive long enough that from here on: most of our lives we have been adults. I think that is a big difference, and wish to ‘natter’ and share with you also that most animals reach that point by the end of their second year of life. Also, just to share exceptions: I saw a YouTube video from a TV News Broadcast about a little girl who actually lived 20 years in the developmental stage of a baby.

Those of you who come back will read from me tomorrow, most likely. Otherwise, maybe you’ll read here again and maybe you won’t.

I’m sure every reader who reads this blog post has experienced ‘wandering mind’ at some point in his or her (new convention, ‘their’) life. So have I. Some cases of wandering mind are like pleasant meanderings when one goes out for fresh air something. There are instances that seem to me, to be reminiscent of what happens when people go onto the Internet and start by checking a friend’s post about why there are naked people as artistic protests nowadays down in Munchen in Germany and end up re-reading about some aspect of subatomic theory you are so old they didn’t teach it to you in school but when it came up on your latest favorite TV show or else your kids brought it up over dinner, you ended up finding out more about it. It isn’t bad, but the sequence does not abide by the rules of linear logic.

A lot of the time that is simply because most situations have a lost going on and are not 2dimensional. For instance as I write this: the keyboard clackety clack as I write / the clock is ticking in the background and the sound of my breathing is loud enough to be noticeable / the coffee table is tidier than it has been in weeks.

Apologies to those of you who have regularly been reading the blog. The reason for the apology is that if you looked for it and it was not there, then I accidentally let you down. There is no other reason for an apology that I can think of off hand.

Yesterday I nearly blogged about Barb Shoup. She writes excellent YA novels. What they mean at the library by Young Adult is more what most of us think us as being ‘big kids’ and ‘teens’, but most adults in the cultures I live in really think that 13 year olds are adults. Anyway, Barb is a good novelist. I met her in person because I went to the Indianapolis Writer’s Center right near where I lived. She is an Executive Director there. I don’t live in Indianapolis now, so it almost seems crazy how many places, people and options which were ‘right there and right here’ are now thousands of miles away and vice versa. Farmer Heinz Schmidtt – so to speak, and his dairy cattle, are now ‘right here’ and ‘right there’ which was not true at the same time that the Broad Ripple Art Center and next door neighbor the Writer’s Center were …well, not as near by as the goats are today, but closer than Verden. I know that like so many directions; the use of local knowledge out of context may come off as sounding crazy.

It only makes sense if you’ve been in both Broad Ripple and Stedorf. In seeking common ground, observe that Rocky Ripple still looks a lot like countryside.

I’d like to finish with a nonsequiter that there are moles flourishing beneath one of the fields of the nearest fold of goats and imitating the bleeting noise of goats is as difficult to do as it is to say some German words.

That may have been ‘filler’. If it seemed like the literary version of pocket lint, I apologize.

Wherever one goes in life, it seems to me, that it can be wondrous or dreary. The same place can be good or bad, depending on numerous factors. Way back in the 1980s I saw a movie in which one of characters said, “Wherever you go; there you are.” I believe the film was Buckaroo Banzai. I think that makes an important point. That granted, having met a number of people during my life, a lot of people have reported that an individual tends to do better in a location which is well suited to that person. Some countryside folk move to cities. Now and then, a person changes nations. In many cases, a slightly different neighborhood in the same town can provide the solution.

Preferences can relate to matters of climate, or work opportunities, education or lifestyle – one may well feel most comfortable being ‘normal’ or ‘the odd one’ depending on how one is.

Everyone knows this, but somehow people can lose perspective. Perspective loss can happen to anyone, but what triggers it varies. Luckily, even though it can be lost, proper perspective regarding any situation can often be regained.

The English have sayings like “gone round the bend” when Americans are more like to saying someone has lost their marbles or is playing without a full deck. Well, today, going around the bend had more to do with making sure I’m learning to read German road signs BEFORE heading out into heavy traffic in a new-to-me car instead of learning how to read the other weird German-centric messages by discovering how German drivers react to my driving. They have played it safe, and have forced me to attend driving school before letting me out there on the roads. It turns out that some of it is their road signs, a little bit is other traffic ‘cultural differences’ which are REAL and the rest is the cultural difference that they want me to figure out when they want me to answer one, two or three of the multiple choices is correct. The first two times I took the German driving test, I crashed and burned on the basis of the American standard that there is one correct answer to a multiple choice question unless otherwise clearly signaled. Not so in Germany…or Deutschland as they call it. Not only that, but I’m still working on understanding how to know when the verb goes on the end of the sentence and when it doesn’t…so I can pass a higher level of German grammatical theory and practice tests for using their language in this country.

When I came onto blog, I was off another hour of driving lessons online. Today, I could access the questions in English. For an American there was loads of German still in it, but there was so much more English that I think I answered 3 or 4 times as many questions in an hour as I could in German. Whoa. I even knew what stuff meant. I am grateful to be learning German, since this country is loaded with those who speak it.

Damyanti Biswas is an author, blogger, animal-lover, spiritualist. Her work is represented by Ed Wilson from the Johnson & Alcock agency. When not pottering about with her plants or her aquariums, you can find her nose deep in a book, or baking up a storm.